I never thought of this song as ethereal; to me it has a vigorous driving rhythm matched (on Murmur) only by "Moral Kiosk".
The Elysian Fields thing is dead on (no pun intended). The way Michael's voice echoes when he sings, "When we die..." just before the last chorus... obviously beyond words, you have to hear it.
I'm particularly intrigued by the phrases "What is dreaming" and "listen with your eyes".
The former is reminiscent of Chuang-Tze's epigram about--on waking--wondering whether he's a man who just dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming he's a man.
Could it be we're already in the afterlife? (getting into Philip K. Dick territory here)
"listen with your eyes" evokes synaesthesia -- though I'd think tripping would have been too intense for Michael in those days; i remember seeing the band play for an audience of kids on Nickelodeon; between songs Peter Buck did nearly all the talking. Stipe was so introverted he literally went fetal.
Guided By Voices were imitative of R.E.M. in their earliest days (from Forever Since Breakfast through Sandbox; they didn't start finding their own style until Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia).
My favorite GbV song is "Dusted", which has the line, "All the sadness it implies I've tasted with my own two eyes." Bob Pollard may have been paying homage to his heroes, or perhaps it was a bit of (harmless) subconscious plagiarism.
I never thought of this song as ethereal; to me it has a vigorous driving rhythm matched (on Murmur) only by "Moral Kiosk".
The Elysian Fields thing is dead on (no pun intended). The way Michael's voice echoes when he sings, "When we die..." just before the last chorus... obviously beyond words, you have to hear it.
I'm particularly intrigued by the phrases "What is dreaming" and "listen with your eyes".
The former is reminiscent of Chuang-Tze's epigram about--on waking--wondering whether he's a man who just dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming he's a man.
Could it be we're already in the afterlife? (getting into Philip K. Dick territory here)
"listen with your eyes" evokes synaesthesia -- though I'd think tripping would have been too intense for Michael in those days; i remember seeing the band play for an audience of kids on Nickelodeon; between songs Peter Buck did nearly all the talking. Stipe was so introverted he literally went fetal.
Guided By Voices were imitative of R.E.M. in their earliest days (from Forever Since Breakfast through Sandbox; they didn't start finding their own style until Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia).
My favorite GbV song is "Dusted", which has the line, "All the sadness it implies I've tasted with my own two eyes." Bob Pollard may have been paying homage to his heroes, or perhaps it was a bit of (harmless) subconscious plagiarism.